I’ve just got back from a lovely few days away with friends. It was a fabulous holiday. My hair looked normal-ish in most of the photos. It’s not really “me” yet, but it doesn’t look like ex-cancer hair and some days I even like it. My energy levels were pretty normal, I didn’t really get any more sleepy than anyone else. I was able to have a few drinks with friends without freaking out over alcohol being carcinogenic and I had a whole evening of conversation with new people where cancer didn’t feature once. We went on pretty walks and stopped in quaint gift shops and most of the time cancer didn’t feature in my thoughts at all.
But sometimes it did.
I got home to wonderful cuddles from my children and then spent three busy days with my sister, niece and nephew. We went on day trips, meals out, generally corralled the 4 boisterous kids until they fell asleep and then played geeky board games all evening. Most of this time, I didn’t think about cancer at all.
But sometimes I did.
When I think about cancer during otherwise happy days, I feel instantly very sad. I’m sad about all the trauma I’ve been through, scared that I’ll have to go through it again and devastated that this wonderful life, I’m currently enjoying, has a 20% chance of abruptly ending within the next 4 years. I don’t know why these feelings pop up randomly; sometimes it’s in response to a reminder in the environment (cancer charities get everywhere! ); but often the feelings appear for no obvious reason. I don’t know what to do with these feelings when they pop up; the more life moves on, the less I feel entitled to them. Cancer doesn’t play much of a role in our lives anymore, it’s not fair to announce out of the blue during a happy day together, “I’m feeling a bit sad right now about the fact that I might die soon and lose all of this”. That would, after all, be a bit of a mood killer.
Sometimes I don’t feel entitled to talk about cancer, even on my own “life after cancer” Facebook page! This is crazy, as it’s the very space I set up, alongside my blog, to talk about my cancery feelings. Naturally though, posts about how great life is, accompanied by happy photographs, are much more popular than posts about sad feelings. Like most people on the planet, I like to be liked and so I prefer to post things that I know people will like. 🙈
This leaves me feeling quite alone sometimes. When these unwanted cancer feelings pop up, I try to push them back down, or hide away with my feelings on the online cancer forums where people “get it”. I delay ammending hospital appointments that I can’t make and put off booking check ups because I don’t want to think about cancer. I worry that people in my real life are bored of cancer now and feel it’s time I stopped harping on about it. Unfortunately though, cancer will always be part of my life. I‘m in cancer remission and the only way out of cancer remission is to have actively growing cancer again! I think I need to acknowledge that these feelings are here to stay, rather than hiding from them.
I’m so grateful for my normal life. I’m so grateful for my good health. I’m so excited about my future plans. But I do still struggle occasionally with the emotional burden of being stuck in cancer remission forever. So this is me. Holding my hands up and saying, I still get sad, I still get scared. I have a good life and a happy life... but being in cancer remission is a life long journey and some days are harder than others.
